Raqs Media Collective. The Great Bare Mat & Constellation

The Great Bare Mat & Constellation is comprised of new works displayed in two distinct gallery installations. The first features a carpet, a surface for the staging of conversations, displayed at the feet of The Vinegar Tasters, a two-panel, 17th-century Japanese screen from the Gardner Museum's collection. The Great Bare Mat & Constellation gains inspiration from two exquisite Han bronze bears in the collection of the Gardner Museum, mat-weights from China that served to weigh down carpets on which debaters would sit and argue philosophical points. Woven by a team of expert Bulgarian weavers, the carpet features a repeated motif that indexes the constellation of the Great Bear against a background of signals, essays, and conversations between three personal computers of the Raqs Media Collective.

The second installation is a silent, looped video projection that transforms, through a series of subtle alterations, the many photographs and film stills the artists recorded while in residence at the Gardner Museum in 2010. The images of the projected video reflect onto an adjacent gallery wall, where a luminous array of shiny metal surfaces mirroring distinct narratives create a crescendo of accumulated images in the mind of the viewer—much like what happens while walking through the galleries of the Museum.

Raqs Media Collective 
The Great Bare Mat & Constellation
Kurator: Pieranna Cavalchini